Phew, it’s been a busy first week in San Miguel de Allende.  The biggest items to talk about are that we’ve chosen San Miguel de Allende as the place to spend the next few months, found a place to live and a school for Geneveve, and just a couple nights ago had our car broken into, lots more details on all of that to follow.

We arrived in San Miguel de Allende on Día de la Independencia, but that didn’t seem to make traffic or anything worse, although the steep, narrow, and bumpy cobblestone streets don’t make getting around the city center very fast.  After a brief mixup about the address of our house rental, we quickly found it and unpacked.  We found the place for pretty cheap on Airbnb at $300 a week, and it had an amazing view.  The views of this city will quickly win you over with its beautiful churches, dazzling sunsets, hot air balloons floating through the air and lakes and mountains in the distance.  And since it was independence day we were treated to some fireworks on our first night there.  Unfortunately we were also treated to some fireworks before dawn on our first morning, and randomly for the next few days too.

One thing we’d heard about San Miguel was that it has a very strong expat community, but we hardly saw any gringos the first night walking around the centro.  This turned out to be partly because the town is also known for being full of people visiting from Mexico City and even more so during holidays, but also because the foreign presence isn’t as overwhelming here as it was in Sayulita.  It’s definitely a major part of the city, but it feels much more in balance.  It almost seems like the influence of people vacationing from Mexico City is stronger than foreign influence.  Either way, the result is a lot of good restaurants and cultural events in a relatively small city of a bit over 100,000 people.  The expats are easy to find online however with a very active Facebook group and Yahoo mailing list, which makes getting information on just about anything very easy.  There’s also a lot of families that have been very welcoming and sharing since we arrived, which is a great vibe to have compared to the overwhelming retiree population that seems to be present in some other areas of Mexico.

Housing was relatively easy to find just by asking on the online groups, looking at Craigslist, and talking to a couple realtors around town.  In the end, the place we chose was shown to us by the Mexican lady managing our Airbnb rental.  When we checked in we told her what we were looking for, and she ended up showing us a few places we liked, gave us lots of good info about the area, introduced us to some other expats, and even helped us find a babysitter.  As far as price goes, things seemed a lot cheaper to me than in Sayulita, averaging a little above $1000 USD a month for a decent 2 bedroom place.  We didn’t look as much in Guadalajara, but San Miguel seems a bit more expensive which doesn’t surprise me.

Schools were easy to find as well, but not quite as easy as housing a bit more difficult to choose from.  Most schools have Facebook pages without much useful info, so asking around among the expats was really the best way to get a sense of what was available.

There were a couple of schools we really liked but that were at least 10 minute drives outside the city.  In the end we chose Academia International because we liked it and it was close enough to the center of the city that we could get there without a big commute.  Portland really has spoiled us for having nearly everything we want within biking or walking distance.  Kim also liked that they had school uniforms since Geneveve will look adorable and that will make dressing for school easier, but that wasn’t one of our biggest factors.

Basically the last week we’ve just been looking at apartments and schools with occasional breaks to tour the city.  Just as we thought we had everything figured out and could relax we had a run of bad luck.  The place we’d been staying didn’t include parking, so we’d just been parking on the street outside.  We hadn’t left any of our really valuable stuff in the car, but there were various things still there for convenience like a big bag of dog food and kids toys for the car ride.  A couple nights ago someone smashed a window out and stole

that stuff, and also popped the trunk and stole the battery and rather forcible ripped out the stereo.  We had actually been about to choose a place to live that didn’t include protected parking, but this event quickly changed our mind on that issue and we picked a quieter place with a gate around it.  In the past I’ve kind of frowned upon the foreigners I’ve seen who just seem to isolate themselves in another country inside their gated communities, but I’ve come to realize that gated communities are the norm even for Mexicans with any amount of money and stuff.  Giant amounts of wealth inequality lead to this kind of living situation where the haves end up living even more separately from the have nots.  We’ve never felt unsafe in the areas we’ve been to, but leaving a car parked on the street at night means you’re likely going to end up with missing car parts at some point.

The robbery definitely shook us for a few days, and definitely has been a pain to deal with replacing the battery, window and dealing with damage they did to the dashboard when removing the stereo.  The worst part isn’t the cost of the stuff or the hassle, it’s the feeling

of violation and mistrust of everyone around that entered our mind.  There’s a lot of rationalizing that we’ve done to try to make ourselves feel better about it, some of it legit like realizing that if they’re stealing kids’ toys and dog food they’re probably poor enough to need some help, some of it just trying to be less attached to the stuff that’s now gone, which was really a goal all along for me with this trip.  But it’s going to be more than a few days before this incident really leaves our conscious thoughts.

So we’re leaving our current rental to get away from the neighborhood and hopefully more quickly forget about the car break in.  Our long term rental isn’t available until October 1st, so we’re going to rent a fun, artistic house in the meantime.  We’re looking forward to not looking for housing and schools, not driving very much, and not packing up our suitcases every couple days.  We’ll be enjoying the nearby hotsprings, seeing the sights, and driving around on the 4 wheeler that comes with the next rental.